The air over Mumbai was heavy, too heavy for night.
It sat on the ruined city like a shroud, pressing down on broken glass, twisted steel, and the endless sprawl of blackened buildings that stretched all the way to the distant sea.
The streets were empty.
No cars. No shouting vendors. No trains clattering overhead. Only the whisper of a wind that didn't feel like wind at all.
A man walked alone through the wreckage, his shoes crunching against fragments of shattered stone. The glow of distant fires painted the skyline orange, and every so often, a weak siren wailed in the distance before cutting out.
He didn't know why he was walking.
He only knew he couldn't stay still.
The smell of smoke and salt clung to his clothes. His shirt was torn, one sleeve missing, a smear of ash across his face. He kept one hand close to the rusted piece of pipe he'd scavenged earlier, a useless weapon maybe, but it gave him comfort in the silence.
He turned down what had once been a crowded street lined with shops. The signs still hung from their posts, some written in English, others in Hindi and Marathi, letters warped and burned. A once-vibrant mural of a Bollywood star smiled down from a cracked wall, her eyes split by a deep fissure running down the center of the paint.
The man stopped and looked up. For a moment, the painted smile seemed cruel in the orange light.
Then thunder rolled, deep and distant, like the growl of some sleeping god.
He looked toward the sound.
The horizon shimmered. The line where the sky met the earth was no longer steady as black clouds were gathering far off, growing and folding into themselves until they became something darker, something not quite like clouds at all.
A storm was coming.
But not like any storm he'd ever seen.
He started walking again, faster now, the pipe in his hand slick with sweat. His ears popped, and the air grew thick, like the atmosphere itself was holding its breath.
He passed the remains of a bus turned on its side. The windows were shattered, and a trail of dried blood ran down the steps. Inside, a child's toy rested on a seat, a small wooden elephant, painted bright blue, untouched by ash. He stared at it for a moment, then looked away.
There were no bodies here anymore. Just the echo of what had been.
A flicker of movement drew his attention further down the street. He stopped, his breath catching.
Through the haze of smoke, a faint light moved.
Not a glow from fire, something softer. Warmer.
He squinted. The light seemed to come from a figure walking slowly through the fog. A girl. Small. Barefoot.
At first, he thought she was a mirage. Her steps were soundless, her long black hair swaying gently against a crimson sari that shimmered faintly even in the dim light. Her skin glowed with the warmth of life untouched by the ruin surrounding her.
And beside her walked a cow.
Not the starved, dusty creatures that wandered the roads of the countryside, this one was immaculate. Its coat was pure white, unblemished and radiant, its horns adorned with gold rings that glinted softly as it moved. Around its neck hung a garland of marigolds, fresh and vivid despite the death around them.
The man froze. He had seen madness and violence in the days since the world had started breaking apart but nothing like this.
The girl's eyes found him as she approached.
They were not human eyes. Not entirely. They were deep, so deep he couldn't see the end of them. Like staring into a well that led straight through the world and out the other side.
She didn't smile. Didn't frown. Her face was serene, her expression ageless. The cow's hooves clicked softly on the cracked pavement as the two of them walked past him, utterly unafraid.
"Are you—" he started, his voice catching. "Are you lost?"
The girl turned her head slightly toward him, but her gaze passed through him as if he weren't there.
The cow snorted softly, steam rising from its nostrils despite the oppressive heat.
Then they walked on.
He turned to watch them go, the strange glow from her sari flickering against the smoke like living fire. Her feet didn't seem to disturb the dust or ash. The cow's massive shoulders rippled beneath its coat, and with every step, the air felt heavier, older.
He swallowed hard, heart hammering. "What the hell…"
The wind picked up again, carrying the smell of rain and something else, ozone, thick and sharp.
Above the city, lightning flickered once, then again, tracing across the clouds in jagged, impossible patterns. Each strike hit somewhere different, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, all burning into the horizon in blinding flashes that shouldn't have been visible from this far away.
He felt it before he heard it, the vibration deep in his bones. The hum of something vast and alive stretching across the sky.
The storm clouds above Mumbai pulsed.
Then the heavens split open.
It wasn't lightning.
It wasn't a storm.
It was a tear.
A vast, black wound cutting across the sky, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. Through it bled a light so dark it swallowed color itself, a shadow so complete that it turned the city below into a silhouette.
The man dropped to his knees, the pipe clattering to the ground beside him. The pressure hit like a tidal wave. The air thickened until every breath felt like drowning.
He could feel it pressing down on him, not just on his body, but on his mind. His thoughts began to unravel, replaced by an overwhelming sense of insignificance. Every memory, every word, every dream began to fade under the crushing weight of whatever looked back through that tear.
He gasped, clutching his head. "Stop—stop—"
The sky didn't listen.
The tear pulsed again, and lightning rained down across the country in arcs of black fire. The air screamed. The buildings around him groaned as if alive. Glass shattered, and somewhere far off, a tower collapsed with a roar that rolled like thunder.
The man tried to crawl toward the side of the street, but his limbs wouldn't respond. His vision blurred, swimming in black and gold. His ears rang with a single, resonant hum, a sound that felt too vast to be understood.
Through the chaos, he saw her again.
The girl and the cow stood in the middle of the street, perfectly still. The air around them shimmered faintly, untouched by the storm. The cow's white coat reflected the impossible light from above, and for a moment, it looked less like an animal and more like a living constellation.
The girl's sari rippled gently around her ankles, and her hair lifted in the wind. Her eyes turned skyward, gazing directly into the wound in the heavens.
And for the first time, he saw her expression change.
A single tear rolled down her cheek not of sorrow, but of recognition. As if something she had been waiting for had finally arrived.
The pressure intensified. The man screamed, though no sound came from his mouth. Blood trickled from his ears, his nose, his eyes. He tried to crawl again, desperate to move, to live but the world had stopped moving with him.
Then the shadow came.
It fell across the ground in front of him, stretching impossibly wide, blotting out even the burning glow of the fires. The sound that followed was a deep, resonant thud that shook the earth itself.
He turned his head weakly. His vision was fading, but he could still see the girl standing perfectly still as the darkness spread behind her.
The shadow grew taller, the air trembling with each passing second.
And then he saw it just before his sight went black.
The cow turned its head peering into the man's eyes and a voice painfully echoed inside his head. "Navaratri has begun, the daughter has arrived."
The man felt more blood dripping from his face as the pain intensified before his head fell to the ground lifeless.
And deep within the heart of India, something vast and ancient began to awaken.